News from around the world

British police arrest 2 in slaying of girl found near royal estate

May 1, 2012 | 11:10
am

LONDON -- British police on Tuesday announced the arrest of two men suspected of killing a teenager whose body was discovered in January near Queen Elizabeth II’s Sandringham mansion, about 100 miles north of London.

The two men, ages 28 and 31, were arrested in the city of King’s Lynn in the east coast county of Norfolk. Their identities were not immediately released.

The decomposed body of Alisa Dmitrijeva, 17, a Latvia native who moved to England with her family in 2009, was found New Year's Day by a dog walker in woodland used by royal hunting parties just a mile from the queen's rural retreat.

The arrests came three months after painstaking forensic investigations and questioning, which included interviews with staff from the royal estate by police from Norfolk and neighboring Cambridgeshire and appeals for information on websites and posters in Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian.

The last reported sightings of Dmitrijeva were in a car parked on a Norfolk beach. Police found the car several weeks ago and were able to search it for further clues.

The 20,000-acre Sandringham estate is a favorite royal vacation residence where the queen and her family were celebrating Christmas and New Year when the gruesome discovery was made just a few hundred yards from the stud farm where the queen's horses are stabled.

The queen rides often in the surrounding parkland and much of the park and woods are open to the public.